I need to apologize for herding all of you to my blog in order to read this...I just couldn't get the letter done in time to send out the cards before Christmas!
So, as most of you know (or know now since you received the card from me that was postmarked in Florida), I moved to Florida NEARLY A YEAR AGO!! What an incredible year it's been! I'm so grateful to finally be here in the beautiful Sunshine State! It's definitely been a long time coming and I'm glad that I finally took the plunge!
So, I just wanted to give you all a quick rundown of what I've been up to since leaving Charlottesville...
I turned THIRTY in January! Holy cow! I can't believe it! On my birthday, Randi, her friend Bobby, his friend Erik and I met up in Cancun, Mexico for a few days...and it was WONDERFUL! We stayed in a BEAUTIFUL hotel, played cards, read, napped in beach chairs, swam, rode the bus into downtown Cancun to go exploring, ate delicious food and just generally had a great vacation! I loved every second of the 80+ degree weather they had there and it definitely made me even more eager to get out and explore more of the world. I'm still trying to get to Puerto Rico, but Randi tells me that I'm not allowed to go there... :( ...not really sure what that's all about!
In February, I packed a few weeks worth of clothes in a suitcase and headed out to Arizona to recover from six months of working in the worst environment EVER...never to return (at least full-time or yet) to Virginia. From Arizona, I flew straight to Florida, deciding that it was just time to give living there a shot! I started out my adventures in Florida staying with Amanda and Nate in Sanford, FL (which is near Orlando)...BUT, at the very end of April, I got a call from a friend down near Tampa who said that she was going to have to have gall bladder surgery and wanted to know if I was in the position to be able to come down and help their family for a few weeks...so on the first weekend of May, I packed up all of my belongings AGAIN and drove an hour and a half down to Tampa...and immediately fell in love with this place!
May, June and July were spent helping my friend after surgery. She and her husband are some of the best people I know here in Tampa...I love them dearly! The very first weekend that I was living in Tampa, I was able to go see Keven in Shrek at the Straz Center that's in downtown Tampa. It was wonderful to see him...especially since the last time I'd seen him was for Kaylyn's wedding back in 2007! In June, I moved into an apartment in Temple Terrace (a suburb of Tampa) with a girl in the singles ward. She's a great roommate and I feel very blessed to have her in my life!
In August, I started a new job at a company called Restocon Corporation...they're a restoration construction firm here in Tampa and they're great people to work for! My "official" title is "Assistant to the Project Managers"...and even though sometimes my job is very challenging, I like it a lot. It helps push me to become a stronger person, for which I'm grateful! About two weeks after starting my new job in August, I was involved in a pretty serious accident on I-4...I made it out alive, but my car didn't! :( I got a new car (a 1998 Honda Civic...with a sunroof...which is definitely my favorite part about the car!) and all is well...I don't have much in the way of residual pain or discomfort from the accident...so I'm very grateful for that!
In September I was able to go to Washington state to visit my dear friend, Niels Nielsen, that I'd met while he was a resident at UVA. It was a great trip and it was so nice to be able to reconnect after not seeing each other for about a year and a half. He lives in eastern Washington now, but there's not a whole lot in eastern Washington but western Idaho, so we went to Seattle for the weekend. It was GREAT and I have decided that I love Seattle...I think that if it had temperatures more Florida-like and palm trees, it would be the perfect city! I look forward to going back sometime! Anyway, Niels and I spent our time together taking TONS of pictures (he's a very talented photographer), touring the city and catching up on each other's lives. It was a terrific trip!
I had the opportunity to go home every weekend in November because Kaylyn and the girls were home visiting...it was wonderful and I only got "stuck" twice in all of that standby flying! I was actually pretty impressed and, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I was very grateful as well! It was wonderful to be able to be home for Thanksgiving, which was the longest amount of time I'd been home since leaving in February. I loved being in Charlottesville, taking in all of the beauty of the mountains and trees, the red mud, the familiarity of the winding roads and seeing people that I care for very much!
So far, December has been great...I've gone sailing in the Tampa Bay, made some recipes from Pinterest, spent time becoming better friends with the people I've met here and have recently been riding out the last part of the year laying on the couch in my living room after severely spraining my left ankle and straining my right one. I tell ya, I do things big...before this I've never had so much as a bloody nose!
I've also (in the last week) started contributing to a website that Josh McLerran owns called "americaland.org"...if you would like to check it out! That's been a lot of fun! Life is sunny and good here in Florida...I love you all and hope that 2012 brings good things to each of your lives!
Love,
Anna
0 comments:
Post a Comment